


A Curse of Time | Lance

by StarlightLion



Series: The Druid's Curse [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universes, F/M, I thought I better put the ship tags, Let us GOOOOO, M/M, My dudes the Lions are so unbelievably powerful, Time Shenanigans, Wormhole Shenanigans, but they aren't Core universe, casual booty calls, eight seasons of fuck you, original major characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-28 22:08:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18765217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightLion/pseuds/StarlightLion
Summary: Tumbling through the event horizon of a corrupted wormhole was always going to be bad. It scattered the Paladins across the universe.Though perhaps it may have scattered them just a little bit farther.





	1. Prologue | Event Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who read **Six Times,** this is the fic series _The Druid's Curse_ that I was talking about at the end. For those who haven't, this is my new fic series! It's had plans and outlines for over a year now.  
> For those of you who found me through **Marked, Attuned, and Awakened** then I'm very sorry about the stall that fic is in, but hopefully getting through this will help ease the writer's block and get that one flowing again. I have not abandoned it, never fear!
> 
> It currently says fifteen chapters total which takes into account the prologue and the possibility of splitting the final chapters in half, but it's merely a prediction and is definitely subject to change. Also, fair warning, chapters will not all be the same length.  
> This book will primarily focus on Core!Lance. Are y'all ready for this ride? Let us GO lads.

“Alright, Paladins. Time to get out of here.”

Allura sets her hands back onto the Castleship’s crystal controls. It’s only been a few quintants - maybe a movement, maybe only slightly longer - since she’s last done so, but the spark inside her connects and she feels the flow of energy pass from her skin to the Castleship, surge across their lines like veins, and it’s as if she’s found water in a desert. Emotions thunder in her chest. She can’t believe the Paladins came back for her - here, of all places. Against Zarkon, of all people. Shiro isn’t safe. Keith’s hurt; the Red Lion is, at least, pushed too hard against an enemy they cannot understand and cannot hope to defeat.

They shouldn’t have come. If it had been Allura’s choice, they would have stayed away. She isn’t worth risking the universe for. But even so, like a firefly flitting under her skin, she cannot help but be grateful that they did.

There is no hope for an Altean aboard the Galran command system.

…

So she’d believed.

And then the spark backflows, and the Castleship shudders quietly where they float, exposed, in the middle of the Galra fleet, and Allura feels the relief rot in her gut. There’s a flicker as video communications with the Yellow Lion flare up and Hunk’s face appears on the Castle’s viewscreens, concern and fear etched into every sharp line of it. _“Hello - what’s going on - I don’t see a wormhole!”_ Too fast to be a real question, and the sentence fragments hang in the air between them.

Allura feels the air like a thousand tiny snowflakes in her lungs.

“The Galra barrier is jamming our ability to create one!” High pitched, cracking with panic - Coran is afraid. And it’s not that Allura has never seen him fearful, but there has always been a way to fight it, something to do, an immediate daunting task. This is different. Coran is frantically tapping away at his control desks, searching for a way to circumvent the barrier, but Allura knows that’s it’s futile.

The Castleship buzzes back against her, a circuit of energy that should be effortless but instead it takes her breath away, a loop that can’t find escape. The ticks drag out. Galran ships converge around them, battlecruisers flanked with lightcruisers, fighters spilling out like a flashing red tide.

The barrier is impenetrable, and they have no way to shut it down.

“They have us completely surrounded!” As Coran finally stops trying to bypass the barrier, looks up and out and around at the certain death closing in around th--

A flicker. A spark that jumps from Allura's palms to the Castleship and sets her heartbeat aflame. A quiet whine, colour flashing and fraying and- dying. Light thinning out.

Like a bubble collapsing; the rush of air. _Freedom._

Around them, the barrier vanishes.

 _“What just happened?!”_ Pidge's face lights up the Castle's viewscreens, soft ambient green that dissolves in the Castle's light before it touches them.

A tick later, Hunk appears opposite her in a halo of yellow. _“Who cares -_ **_wormhole!”_ **Demanding, impatient - afraid - and Allura can't even bring herself to be angry with the normally calm Paladin. She just obeys. The quintessence connects and the teludavs ignite, and close in front of them-- too close, dangerously close, close enough that only Coran’s quick hands on the flight controls keep them from being yanked into the event horizon as it forms.

The Blue Lion and the Black Lion - and in her jaws, the Red - are in the Castleship central Lion hangar, and the Yellow and Green aren’t far behind. Allura doesn’t hesitate, as the Galra forces bear down on them.

There’s a moment as they pass into the wormhole, when somehow the whole universe seems to crackle around her. Allura can’t stop the short cry as foreign energy cascades in after them, and she’s protected by the Castle, the ship absorbing the flow of-- she’s not sure _what_ it is, but it feels like lightning, dark and oily and malicious.

Around them, the wormhole storms. Turns purple and black. They’re already passing into it, and Allura can’t turn then around even if she wanted to - there are too many Galra behind them, and Zarkon has already fought them even against all five Lions. _Beaten_ them. But she feels it, like being dipped in acid - and she knows, deeper than her own heartbeat where it thunders under her ribs, that something is wrong.

_So very wrong._

Everything shakes as the wormhole seals behind them, the Castleship shudders hard enough to throw Coran to one knee, Allura digs her fingers in and holds onto the crystals for dear life. She needs to stay connected to the wormhole, or it might destabilise around them.

Although, as the wormhole crackles deep purple and black, Allura realises that it might not matter.

 _“Coran, what’s happening?!”_ comes Shiro’s voice across their coms, shrieking with static. It’s only when Coran replies that Allura realises the static isn’t in their radios.

“The integrity of the wormhole has been compromised!” The static is in Allura’s head. The wormhole presses down on all sides - not hers anymore, whatever is wrong with it, it’s not hers and she can’t control it. Nothing happens when she rips her hands away, severs the flow of quintessence through her palms. The wormhole remains, alive with writhing violet energy not her own; however hostile, it doesn’t consume them yet. “It’s breaking down!”

But the static isn’t in their radios. _It’s inside Allura’s head._ She feels the Lions screaming, like a storm in the distance. Unlike anything she’s ever felt from them before. Almost… _afraid._

 _“What does_ **_that_ ** _mean?”_ Lance calls from where the Blue Lion has tumbled from the Castleship into the corrupted wormhole.

Allura thinks the response barely half a tick before Coran says it - _“It means we have no control over where we’re headed!”_ \- and without permission her eyes snap shut. She can’t stop it. She isn’t even sure what _it_ is, but the wormhole isn’t hers and she can’t control it. They’re not safe. The Lions are in freefall, afraid, slipping away. When she dares to open her eyes again, the Yellow tumbles past the front of the Castleship.

In her ears, Hunk’s panicked cries blur together with those of the other Paladins, a blinding cacophony that buries itself under her skin like needle bugs. The Green Lion flashes by, a tangle of emerald limbs and uselessly flashing thrusters. Inside her, the Green Paladin screams.

They touch the edge of the wormhole. For a moment, Pidge’s scream swells brighter, and then the Lion is torn away by the unstable wormhole.

Helplessly, Allura can only stare at the yawning black abyss in the distance while - one by one - the Voltron Lions pierce the event horizon and vanish into the void, their constant whispered presence winking out.


	2. Loop One | Sharpshooter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first loop is always the hardest.

It might just be the most painful thing he’s ever experienced.

It’s not the fear, or the way the edge of the wormhole sweeps through Blue’s entire body, presses against his Paladin armour and then seeps through to his skin, hissing and acidic. Not the way Blue _screams_ inside his head; not how his senses flicker off one after the other until he can’t tell which way is up and which is down, until he can’t see anything but throbbing whiteness or smell anything but blood and lightning, until all that remains is pain. It’s not even the way his chest becomes leaden and hollow as breath escapes him, the clawing panic that slowly dies into numb acceptance as oxygen fades - and with it, thought.

But it’s how Blue twists around him, and he feels her body dissolving in the attempt to protect him from the disastrous tumble they’ve taken. How, slowly, her screams crackle away into lightning into ringing silence into not even that.

When she’s gone, the infernal abyss that’s claimed her oozes under his skin and flays him. He feels it, peeling away skin, away muscle, away ligament and cartilage and organs. The spurt of blood as veins and arteries are opened, the flash of thoracic fluid as his ribs part under the onslaught. Air puffs out like a distraught sigh as his diaphragm is punctured - dissolved - gone. Bones crack, splinter, melt away.

There’s nothing left except the pain, not even Blue. Lance can’t even scream - there’s not enough left with which to try - all he can do is endure. And he tries, he tries so hard to collect a thought and reach for his Lion and _endure_ \- and there’s nothing for him to reach for, there’s no whispering tide or the touch of frost in return. The crashing waterfall of Blue’s anger, still so unfamiliar and frightening on the rare occasion he’s felt it, would be welcome relief in place of everything this is, but… But there’s nothing.

Lance’s attempt at cognizant thought fragments; the shards scrape in the hollowness of there being nothing left, the feeling silent and echoing, and eventually he puts together something from the puzzle. _Am I dead?_ He can’t think of a better answer. He must be dead.

This must be hell.

And who’s to say that he doesn’t deserve it? He’s fought the war against the Galra as hard and as bitterly as the princess who drew them into it; as if it was his own. Fought - _and killed._ He’s passed judgement on the enemy Galra soldiers simply for _being_ and he’s executed them for it. Maybe hell is where he belongs. Zarkon is responsible for how the Empire’s become evil. Surely - _surely_ \- it couldn’t have always been this way.

But Lance will never see otherwise. He’ll never see the war through; he’ll never see Zarkon overthrown. Maybe… if they’re lucky, maybe they’ll find another Blue Paladin to replace him. They need everyone to form Voltron and fight Zarkon. They need…

_It hurts._

They don’t need him. They’ll do fine without him. And he can’t hear Blue, can’t feel her touch or sense her presence, so wherever he is she didn’t come with him. She must still be with the others. _Please let her be with the others._ Whatever’s happened, Lance can’t bear the possibility that somewhere in the infinite hell, Blue is here too.

The eternity that follows passes by in seconds. It feels like forever, an infinity hidden between heartbeats. A blink, the first moment that coalesces into sensation, like popping a bubble in reverse, like belly flopping into the ocean when one _is_ the ocean. The first heartbeat feels like a memory; it’s unreal, a quivering tenebrous tactility inside a chest that might be forming together from mist even as Lance plunges through lifetimes and a second heartbeat goes off like fireworks. Then there’s another, and the rush of air that follows might as well be a tidal wave that sweeps through him, a scourging tornado that forces open hollows in lungs that have never breathed and then bursts forth again laced in the shivering scream of a virgin voice.

It takes forever to subside.

When, eventually, it does, Lance simply allows it. _Breath,_ heartbeat, heartbeat, _breath._ Heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat, _breath,_ heartbeat, heartbeat. It doesn’t hurt, and Lance allows himself to revel in it. Heartbeat, _breath,_ heartbeat.

He’s alone, when he finally opens his eyes. The cosmic array of stars and glittering lights that fill the void on all sides are blinding, and he cringes - squints - his visor darkens with a thought, and through the dimness of it he tries to pick out his surroundings. _Not hell. Alive. Breathing, of course I’m alive._ Not hell, but space.

Blue is gone. Whatever it was that tore them apart, she hasn’t come back like Lance has.

Desperately, Lance tries to swallow the panic. No Lion, and no Castleship in sight, and no Paladins or even any Galra - _nothing._ He’s utterly alone in the void of space, and if no one comes for him, then he’ll run out of oxygen and die anyway.

_No. Come on, Lancey-Lance, pull it together. You’ll be alright._

It takes several tries for Lance to activate his distress signal, but it’s easier to relax once he does. Take slow breaths, steady breaths - conserve oxygen. Don’t panic. One of the others will pick up the call, or someone from a sympathetic planet, or anyone except the Galra - or, as the time winds on and on and his distress beacon becomes a numb red glow in the corner of his visor, the Galra themselves.

Even the Galra are preferable to asphyxiating to death, in the middle of fuck nowhere space, _alone._

But the time winds out, and eventually another red light comes on in his visor, and Lance struggles to maintain the slow, easy breaths. _Don’t panic._ God, don’t panic, don’t panic. Freaking out would get him killed ten times faster than running out of air. He’s been reluctant to burn jetfuel - but the option is becoming more and more appealing. He can’t see anything nearby, and though a brief perusal of the galactic map shows him nothing either, the urge to just fly until he runs into something burns brighter every second that goes by.

Lance doesn’t. He won’t find anything. It will only waste jetfuel that he might need later. (If there’s a later. _Please god, let there be a later.)_

He’s trying to sleep when the _crackle-snap_ of static finally flashes across his radio. Jolts - takes too sharp and deep a breath and curses himself - and then recognises voices spilling into his helmet. Squinting, and then the briefest burst of his jetpack to spin him around - and relief floods his body so fast and so cold that for a split second, he thinks it’s Blue.

She’s still gone. Silent. It numbs the rush a little, but there’s nothing to stop the tears welling up in his eyes as they settle on a strange ship closing in on him. _He isn’t going to die._ They found him. He doesn’t recognise the ship, neither the colours nor the design nor the insignia stamped on the side, but--

Lance can’t even say what it is. Maybe it’s the odd insignia stamped on the side of the ship. If he didn’t know better, he might say it was… almost like… a lion.

“Hey!” he calls out anyway, because the ship is getting closer and the voices babbling across his radio have resolved into words. They aren’t words he recognises - whatever it is that Blue does to translate all the languages of the universe, it isn’t working. Cold, deep inside his ribcage; the echo of fear and loneliness. Lance had never believed that space was so _lonely_ before he’d gotten lost in it, even with friends, even with almost a family. Blue has made it bearable, a constant comforting companion who never complains when he babbles for hours on end. Blue has been his anchor in the war. Blue’s the one who wraps him up in a rush of cool water and holds him safely when he can’t escape the stark truth that - inevitably - he’s _killed_ people fighting Allura’s war.

So he can’t understand what the strangers on the odd ship are saying, but that’s alright. Blue’s just hurt; she shielded him from as much of whatever had happened when they fell out of the wormhole as she could, so it only makes sense that she hasn’t recovered yet. _She’ll be alright. You’ll be alright. Focus on this, right now. Come on, Lance. It’ll be fine._ “He-e-e-ey!!” he calls again, waving a hand above his head. Floodlights pin him in place, but he doesn’t try to fight it.

The voices are frantic across the radio. “Uh… Okay, I can’t understand you guys, right? So… English?” One voice becomes louder than the rest, and then quells them into silence. It’s low and gravelly, distinctly masculine - but Lance doesn’t understand what it says when it snaps something. At least the uptick of tone at the end makes him think it’s a question. _Shit._ They’re probably doing the exact same thing Lance is. “Uh… No? English is a no then. Español?” Hopeful. He doesn’t speak anything else - not even the basic passable Altean that Pidge has managed to learn.

 _“Kléarin áérava!”_ It’s meaningless in Lance’s ears, and he sighs. There’s no hope for communication over the radio - they just don’t speak each other’s language. Instead, he waves his hands above his head again.

He’s not sure what the next round of words mean either, but the ship pulls up right on top of him and after a few moments, he spots the shadow of an open hatch on the underside. Jetflame spurts from his jetpack, the red lights flash inside his visor, but Lance makes it to the little airlock - bites down on the frantic throttling feeling, reminds himself he’s going _into_ it, not out - and claws his way into the ship.

Air hisses as it seals behind him and the airlock repressurises. Lance can’t help it when finally the mask of his helmet clicks open and retracts, lets the new air from the ship flow back onto his face; he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, lets his bones turn to jelly as gravity (however artificial) takes hold of him again for the first time in hours. The floor is hard, and especially so in contrast to the buoyant nothing of space, or the fluid sensation of flying with Blue, but he sinks onto it all the same.

_Safe._

Not gonna die alone in space. Lance has never been so grateful for distress signals.

He hears the footsteps of the owners of the ship as they come down to meet him, but he doesn’t bother to open his eyes.

Lance assumes they’re friendly.

And it’s not until he feels the cold barrel of a gun come to rest under his chin that he realises he’s made the wrong assumption. The click of a trigger being held too tight snaps out around him, and it’s followed by the faintest hum; the familiar hum of an energy rifle heating up in preparation to fire.

Blue eyes open slowly, lift even slower, and meet the face of an alien that Lance doesn’t recognise; humanoid in basic form, but streaked with fur and with a crown of what appear to be horns, a short tail flicking quietly behind them. Four eyes are narrowed at him, horizontal pupils nothing more than the thinnest of black slits.

The alien shouts something at him. The rifle bounces with the movement, and Lance lets his head bob up and down to follow. Whatever the alien is saying, it’s meaningless babble. Lance can’t even bring himself to care; the whole thing seems warped, everything moving in slow motion. Surreal. His body barely feels like it belongs to him, but he rises to his feet - lifts his hands into the air either side of his head. Like a good prisoner.

There’s another alien in the ship, short and squat and covered in scales that don’t quite seem to fit over its body correctly, wide wings folded jaggedly at its back. Its whole body is a dull smokey iron colour; it watches him with eyes like gunmetal, and says nothing. Unblinking. Until the gun is pressed harder into Lance’s throat, he meets their gaze - and then he looks back to the one threatening his life.

They hiss something at him. Words that tumble across the short gap between them, skate across Lance’s ears, but he can’t even pick apart where each word ends, let alone what they might mean. He’s forced back a step.

“I don’t understand,” he tries despite himself, even as the fear is frozen under his skin and he can’t quite find his balance. It feels like the air itself is throbbing around him. _Safe. Gun. Blue is gone. Not dying - but maybe about to anyway._ Thoughts spin faster than each heartbeat; they feel like drumbeats being played against his diaphragm by someone that isn’t him. “I can’t understand you.”

The alien isn’t meeting his gaze anymore. They’re looking him over, scanning his armour. The hand that isn’t squeezing the trigger of the gun - _too tense, please relax, it’s so easy to fire accidentally, please relax, oh god_ \- reaches out. Their hand - three fingers, a thumb that’s as long as their middle finger, tipped in pinprick claws - presses against the Voltron V that shines blue on Lance’s chest.

For a single second, like being suspended in freefall, their eyes connect. The adrenaline is raging in Lance’s blood, a thunderous chorus that he can’t escape; the alien, staring at him, yanks back their hand like they’ve been burned.

There’s fear, glittering in each of those four eyes. _Terror._

They’re afraid of him. _No. Wait._ Lance lowers one hand - touches the V engraved in his armour. _Not me. They’re afraid of Voltron._

And he hates it, that realisation, the sudden certainty that whoever these people are, whatever they know of Voltron, it’s enough to make them deathly afraid of him. A moment later, it’s followed by a realisation he thinks he might hate even more.

The _are_ deathly afraid of him. Emphasis on deathly.

Everything goes blank, for just a moment.

…

And it’s a moment too long.

Lance doesn’t simply _allow_ it to happen, of course. He moves, muscles tense, the plan unfolds in a nanosecond in his mind. He needs to move back and duck away from the immediate threat of the energy rifle - draw his bayard out from where it’s energylocked into the thigh of his armour - keep moving back, pray that there’s enough room for him to morph his bayard into its weapon form and aim. Does he shoot for the gun itself, or for their knees?

It only takes a moment, for the plan to form, amorphous, and snag on the question. He’s automatically dismissed the option of killing them, but he shouldn’t. They’re hostile.

And it only takes a moment. _It’s a moment too long._

He’s moving, reaching for the connection port on his thigh to summon his bayard - he’s _moving,_ but it doesn’t matter because the terror flashes bright in the alien’s four eyes, brilliant shimmering green, and their finger - too tense on the trigger, too tight - squeezes tighter, and the plasma bursts, and there’s nothing Lance can do.

At point blank, the shot connects. Skin sizzles, bubbles, and parts; flesh boils and melts. It’s almost instant. Takes only a moment.

Blood sprays.

Only a moment later, and the plasmatic _zap_ fades into the air. Lance’s body collapses to the floor in a crumpled pile. The inside of his helm is a gorey mess - shredded brain matter blown outwards and fragments of bone. Loose teeth.

The alien’s breath fogs the air.

And then - _only a moment later_ \- nothing exists.

Nothing fragments into fireworks. Senses coalesce.

 _Breath,_ heartbeat, heartbeat, _breath,_ heartbeat.

Lance opens his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor little Bluebell. He'll figure it out fam, don't y'all worry.  
> Also this hasn't been edited yet lmao, I'll get onto that.  
> Thanks for peeping!


End file.
